Hilton L. Root

Tying the King's Hands Credible Commitments and Royal Fiscal Policy during the Old Regime

Historians commonly assume that the Old Regime monarchy in France attempted to eliminate corporate society in order to create liberal institutions. They also assume that the centralization of state power occurred at the expense of such corporate bodies as provincial estates, the municipal corporations, and the village communities. By contrast, I argue that those institutions were not vestiges of an earlier society waiting to be swept away by the stronger, more unified modern state. Instead, I believe that corporate bodies not only flourished under the Old Regime, but contributed to the functioning of the absolute state.

The Redistributive Role of Government: Economic Regulation in Old Régime France and England

The lobbying activities of private groups had an important redistributive influence on national economic policies in both England and France; however, the different organization of government in the two nations gave a particular shape and structure to the redistributive character of national politics. In England, Parliaments role in the legislative process made gaining economic concessions from the government long and difficult. During the eighteenth century, the English governments role was increasingly limited to adjudicating the claims of influential but conflicting groups. In France, by contrast, the governments economic decisions were neither subject to parliamentary scrutiny nor to open public discussion. Whereas the rules of the redistributional game in eighteenth-century England were increasingly public knowledge, the administrative and political process that allowed the French government to pursue its mercantilist programs was private. Furthermore, the rules changed according to ministerial whim. As one historian put it, public law was a forbidden domain, “a mystery reserved to the king and his ministers,” permitting select members of privileged clans, rather than broadly defined interest groups, to enjoy the benefits of government patronage. Although the creation of sophisticated interests and competitive lobbies allowed the English Parliament to provide special favors to particular industries during the eighteenth century, unlike the French executive, neither Parliament nor the English executive had the discretionary authority to distribute monopoly rents to particular ministerial or royal favorites. In England the governments distribution of spoils followed procedures more open to the English political elite as a whole; still, corruption was more pervasive in English public administration than in France, where executive supervision of central government agents was more comprehensive.

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REFORM IN SRI LANKA

In 1996, the government of Sri Lanka enlisted the help of international consultants to address significant weaknesses in the countrs public administration. Their study focused on reorganization of public administration structures, rationalization of public sector cadres and introduction of results-based management systems and procedures. The analysis focused on five main topics: consolidation of core strategic functions in the Presidents office; improvement of the policy coordination process at cabinet and ministerial levels; separation of policy-making, service delivery and regulatory functions of public administration; enhancing the effectiveness of line ministries through realigning tasks; and introduction of a results-based management system that links resource inputs with well-defined outputs of departments and offices. The urgency of public service reform has been an issue on the national agenda for some time. Until the institutional capacity and effectiveness of the public administration system is upgraded, the credibility of government efforts to bring about a more liberal and competitive market environment will be seriously in doubt. The recommendations in this article can be extended beyond Sri Lanka, serving as a general model of civil service reform for other South Asian nations.

Demographic growth in dangerous places: Concentrating conflict risks

If one merely counts countries becoming democratic, progress in the international system looks impressive. However, more relevant for future stability is whether countries—whether democratic or not—are fragile, having ineffective and/or illegitimate governments. Moreover, the size of fragile countries, not merely their number, will be important for the future. Recent data shows that fertility has stalled at very high levels in many fragile states, including several of the largest, creating a situation in which almost all the growth in the world’s future labor force in coming decades will occur in fragile states. Indeed, the world seems likely to go from a situation in which two-thirds of workers are employed in stable states to the reverse, in which the majority of the global working-age population is found in fragile states with a weak ability to provide education, investment and jobs to ensure their productivity. Unless this trend can be reversed, both global economic growth and regional political stability will be at risk because projected global population growth is overwhelmingly concentrated in fragile states.

Global Political Dynamics and the Science of Complex Systems

Do the complex dynamics of international relations resemble the long-term evolution observed in living systems? This chapter will try to identify the mechanisms associated with those dynamics, and to determine if the science of complex adaptive systems can aid in the understanding of international development.It tries to address the weaknesses of current theories of international political economy to adequately explain global diversity and queries its empirical and theoretical limitations. Providing insight on the mechanisms by which divergence is a response to heightened interconnectivity, complexity theory offers a way to overcome the limitations of conventional political economy analysis.We find that at a qualitative level the dynamics of the international system resemble known aspects of biological behaviour, speciation and intermittent behaviour. The next frontier for the study of social development is to find quantitative measures that define these processes.

Can Pakistan have creative cities? An agent based modeling approach with preliminary application to Karachi

The form and function of many cities are increasingly marred by congestion, sprawl and socioeconomic segregation, preventing them from experiencing expected productivity gains associated with urbanization. We operationalize these insights by creating a stylized agent-based model of a theoretical city, inspired by social complexity theory and the new urban literature.

Markets, Norms, and Peasant Rebellions A Rational Choice Approach with Implications for Rural Development

In this article, we present a set of theoretical speculations about peasant norms that differ from those of earlier theorists: (1) Premarket peasant norms, that is, reciprocity, are a product of incentive-guided and self-interested behavior. For example, in the premarket environment, extended kinship obligations served as social insurance. (2) The evolution of markets can be beneficial for peasants. Peasants did not necessarily have to be coerced into abandoning premarket norms. Specialization led to the possibility of accumulating savings, which could substitute for the premarket institutions. (3) Peasant violence or rebellion is rarely a reaction to the emergence of markets per se, nor is it due to innate cultural predilections. Rather, peasant violence is often a response to the monopoly of control by elites over the surpluses created by markets. These claims are theoretically substantiated by simple applications of models of noncooperative games and illustrated with various sketches of examples from Western European (mainly French) economic history. The claims are contrasted with more traditional views on the impact of markets on peasant norms. The conclusive settlement of substantive issues in the study of peasant politics is not our goal; rather, we hope to clarify the arguments by directing attention to the assumptions upon which empirical results are derived.

The US Foreign Aid Policy to the Middle East: The Political Economy of US Assistance to the MENA Region

With 63 percent of the worlds proven petroleum resources, and with 37 percent of its natural gas, it seems highly ironic that the Middle East and North African Region (MENA) is also the largest recipient of US foreign aid. In addition to fossil fuels, the region is also well endowed with many other minerals and plants providing it with a per capita GDP twice as high as the average of developing countries, higher even than former socialist transition economies. Poverty is relatively low in MENA, only 1.6 percent of its population earns less than

Three Asian Dictators: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

1 per capita a day. Infrastructure is relatively well developed, 88% of its population have access to improved water sources, and 91% to electricity (World Bank). From the perspective of poverty reduction, MENA’s needs for economic assistance from the developed world are by no means as pressing as those of poorer regions, such as Sub-Saharan Africa, yet MENA is the largest recipient of US foreign assistance since 1973.

Fast, slow and endless variation drives global development

This article will explore the political virtues of the institutions that transformed the national economies of Philippines, Singapore, and Taiwan. In the former, institutions created the capacity for institutional development, whereas in the latter, it facilitiated the siphoning-off economic surplus in side-payments to a narrow elite. To understand the different coalitional structures that emerged in the two countries, we will explore incentives triggered by the degree of systemic vulnerability, geopolitical security and resource constraints that the leadership faced to determine the political incentives that motivate the creation of institutions for economic transformation.